Nice article in the PD today by Mark Naymik about the problems with the expansive event zone restrictions announced last week. The Police have assured the Plain Dealer and WEWS TV 5 reporter Joe Pagonakis that they will not displace homeless people. We have not seen this in writing yet and do not understand why homeless people were not specifically referenced in the legislation published on May 25. with all the outside law enforcement coming into town, we need to have something in writing. Below is the letter that we sent.

We need someone from the City to put in writing the policy regarding residents who stay outside downtown. By the way, we got some grief for identifying general places that homeless people sleep in Cleveland. We saw that Naymik was criticized for identifying Riverbed Road and other hotspots. This is silly. If you live in Cleveland or work downtown, you know where generally homeless people sleep. It is not a secret, and nor should it be a secret. We do not believe that we should ignore or hide homeless people. We should be talking everyday about how to get our neighbors back into housing. No one has a right to be ignored. Many are living on public property and we should be working everyday to get them inside. It is disrespectful and undignified in the richest country on the planet to have all these people living outside. We cannot sue the City over their sweeps policy of trying to move people out of sight and out of mind, and then keep their homes secret from the media or politicians. The more visible, the more likely they will be housed. I would expect if my street were targeted for destruction during the RNC that a reporter would come to my door to ask, "What do you think?" Just as they are doing now with homeless people.